Emerging Technology – Page 4 – Computer Security Articles

How blockchain could help block fake news

February 17, 2020 admin BlockChain, content archiving, Emerging Technology, internet, Security, Web Applications

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2020 03:00:00 -0800

In 2018, a video of former President Barrack Obama surfaced on YouTube explaining how easily technology could be used to manipulate video and create fake news. It got more than 7.2 million views.

In the video, Obama explains how we live in dangerous times when “enemies” can make anyone say anything at any point in time. Moments later, it’s revealed that the video was itself faked.

Whether its news articles, images or video, fake and misleading content has proliferated across the internet over the past five or so years. One possible solution to the problem now being proposed would standardize how content is delivered online, with anything outside those standards not trusted.

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ComputerWorld Independent

MIT researchers say mobile voting app piloted in U.S. is rife with vulnerabilities

February 13, 2020 admin BlockChain, Emerging Technology, Government IT, Mobile, privacy, Security

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 13:30:00 -0800

Elections officials in numerous states have piloted various mobile voting applications as a method of expanding access to the polls, but MIT researchers say one of the more popular apps has security vulnerabilities that could open it up to tampering by bad actors.

The MIT analysis of the application, called Voatz, highlighted a number of weaknesses that could allow hackers to “alter, stop, or expose how an individual user has voted.”

Additionally, the researchers found that Voatz’s use of Palo Alto-based vendor Jumio for voter identification and verification poses potential privacy issues for users.

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ComputerWorld Independent

U.S. Air Force to pilot blockchain-based database for data sharing

February 6, 2020 admin BlockChain, Emerging Technology, Government IT, graph databases, Security

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2020 13:23:00 -0800

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) is planning to test a blockchain-based graph database that will allow it to share documents internally as well as throughout the various branches of the Department of Defense and allied governments.

The permissioned blockchain ledger comes from a small Winston-Salem, N.C. start-up, Fluree PBC, which announced the government contract this week. Fluree is working with Air Force’s Small Business Innovation Research AFWERX technology innovation program to launch a proof of concept of the distributed ledger technology (DLT) later this year.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Iowa Caucus chaos likely to set back mobile voting

February 4, 2020 admin BlockChain, Emerging Technology, Government, Government IT, Mobile, privacy, Security

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2020 12:51:00 -0800

A coding flaw and lack of sufficient testing of an application to record votes in Monday’s Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucus will likely hurt the advancement and uptake of online voting.

While there have been hundreds of tests of mobile and online voting platforms in recent years – mostly in small municipal or corporate shareholder and university student elections – online voting technology has yet to be tested for widespread use by the general public in a national election.

“This is one of the cases where we narrowly dodged a bullet,” said Jeremy Epstein, vice chair of the Association for Computing Machinery’s US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC). “The Iowa Democratic Party had planned to allow voters to vote in the caucus using their phones; if this sort of meltdown had happened with actual votes, it would have been an actual disaster. In this case, it’s just delayed results and egg on the face of the people who built and purchased the technology.”

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ComputerWorld Independent

Fed rule on patient access to healthcare data gets EMR vendor pushback

January 30, 2020 admin Electronic Health Records, Emerging Technology, Health Care Industry, it governance, privacy, Security

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2020 03:00:00 -0800

The largest electronic medical record (EMR) vendor in the U.S. is fighting a proposed government rule to allow patients and their physicians greater access to electronic health information – regardless of the technology platform – to promote data exchange.

According to a number of recent reports, EMR vendor Epic Systems is lookng to derail the finalization of a rule from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that would implement some provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act. In particular, the rules governing information-blocking of patient healthcare information and EMR interoperability are at the heart of the fight.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Seattle tries out mobile voting

January 28, 2020 admin Amazon Web Services, BlockChain, Cloud Computing, Emerging Technology, Government, Government IT, microsoft, Security

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2020 03:00:00 -0800

About 1.2 million Seattle area voters will be able to use their smartphone, laptop or a computer at their local library to vote in a current election this year.

This will be the first-time online voting is available to all eligible registered voters of a district, according to a foundation behind the initiative.

The King Conservation District in Washington State is the third region in the U.S. to partner with the non-profit Tusk Philanthropies on a national effort to expand mobile voting, and Washington is the fifth state to pilot mobile voting in general. The King Conservation District is a state environmental agency that includes Seattle and 33 other cities, but it is separate from the King County Elections agency and operates under a different budget.

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